1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for providing a virtual marketplace or exchange for distributed signals or indicators by signal sellers for distribution and sale to signal buyers, for use toward advertising or other objectives.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, it is known in the prior art to provide market signals as information passed between participants in a market. Examples of relevant art documents include the following:
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0178845 for “System and Method for Matching Merchants to a Population of Consumers” by inventors Rane, et al., filed Jan. 20, 2010, describes a process of data analysis for the purpose of improving targeted advertising and analytics of data, with the major focus on drawing useful inferences for various entities from aggregated data, wherein entities are not limited to businesses and may include government agencies (census, polling data, etc.).
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0233206 for “Methods and Systems for Electronic Data Exchange Utilizing Centralized Management Technology” by inventors Peterson, et al., filed May 24, 2012, describes an exchange of data among business entities and the process of disclosing/receiving data and a central management system for companies engaged in strategic partnership or alliance, whereas Patent 1 deals with a market place dynamic rather than a data exchange within a locked-in partnership management.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0066062 for “Systems and Methods to Present Triggers for Real-Time Offers” by inventors Yoder, et al., filed Aug. 8, 2011, describes collecting consumer transaction data for the benefit of targeted advertisements and an auctioning process (auction engine) for providing data clusters to clients. For example, cardholders may register in a program to receive offers, such as promotions, discounts, sweepstakes, reward points, direct mail coupons, email coupons, etc. The cardholders may register with issuers, or with the portal of the transaction handler. Based on the transaction data or transaction records and/or the registration data, the profile generator is to identify the clusters of cardholders and the values representing the affinity of the cardholders to the clusters. Various entities may place bids according to the clusters and/or the values to gain access to the cardholders, such as the user. For example, an issuer may bid on access to offers; an acquirer and/or a merchant may bid on customer segments. An auction engine receives the bids and awards segments and offers based on the received bids. Thus, customers can get great deals; and merchants can get customer traffic and thus sales.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0246309 for “Method, stored program, and system for improving descriptive profiles” by inventor Shkedi, filed May 25, 2011, describes a process that enables entities to acquire databanks of user profiles that can add to existing knowledge of user profile data and the process is described as a transaction in that the entities disclose a set of profile information in exchange for additional, helpful data relevant to the disclosed data.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0323954 for “Systems and methods for cooperative data exchange” by inventors Bonalle, et al., filed Jun. 14, 2011, describes methods that enable business entities to gain greater, useful insights on their customers and build upon their relatively limited data via consumer data exchange, wherein upon sharing/merging/exchanging customer data, businesses can perform analysis to improve their business performance, and provides an example wherein original data may consist of a list of consumers, which can be enriched with the consumers' transaction history, search history, etc. via data exchange with other entities that own such information.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0262497 for “System and Methods for Controlling Bidding on Online Advertising Campaigns” by inventor Karlsson, filed Apr. 10, 2009, describes a system for managing bid prices of an online advertising campaign. The system includes a memory storing instructions for adjusting bid prices, and a campaign controller for generating a nominal bid price and a perturbation parameter, based on an ad request received from an advertiser. The system further includes an engine for generating a perturbed bid price based on the nominal bid price and the perturbation parameter, according to the instructions stored in the memory. The system further includes a serving unit for serving an ad impression based on the perturbed bid price. Also discloses that advertisers can bid on desired online ad delivery for their ad campaigns, describes management of the bidding process by managing and adjusting the bid price and describes systems and methods for a biddable multidimensional marketplace for advertising.
European Patent Application Publication No. 2063387 for “Systems and methods for a biddable multidimensional marketplace for advertising on a wireless communication device” by inventors Maggenti, et al., filed Mar. 31, 2008, describes providing targeted advertisements via mobile devices, and systems, methods and apparatus for a multidimensional bidding marketplace for providing advertising content to wireless devices. In particular, aspects allows advertising providers, to define and/or identify a one or more wireless device-based transient factors from a plurality of factors, which serve to define a targeted advertising audience and to bid on advertising based on the selected or identified transient factors.
European Patent Application No. 2076877 (also published as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0103795) for “Lightweight and heavyweight interfaces to federated advertising marketplace” by inventors Biggs, et al., filed Oct. 18, 2007, describes a multi-party advertising exchange including advertising and publishing entities from different advertising networks, the invention provides architectures for an online advertising marketplace that range from lightweight to heavyweight implementations. A lightweight client side implementation of an interface includes centralized processing and storage of federated advertising marketplace data by centralized servers or services. A heavyweight client side implementation of an interface for advertising entities includes providing a peer instance of a federated advertising exchange application or set of processes is provided to each advertising entity as an interface for advertising entities where processing and storage are performed locally to each peer instance. Distributed advertising data can be replicated or synchronized with other peer instances.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,224,725 for “Escrowing digital property in a secure information vault” by inventors Grim, et al., filed Sep. 15, 2005, describes that data can be escrowed by receiving escrow parameters including a condition(s) for releasing the escrowed data, and an escrow recipient. An escrow contract is then created based upon the specified escrow parameters. The escrowing further includes storing the digital data in a secure information vault, and storing the escrow contract, along with a pointer to the stored data, in a database. When the condition has been satisfied, the data is released to the escrow recipient. The condition(s) for release can be a payment sum, a date, an indication from a depositor, a trustee or a vault administrator, and/or fulfillment of another escrow contract; also describes keeping data secure and releasing data to certain parties upon satisfaction of certain criteria.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,285,610 for “System and method of determining the quality of enhanced transaction data” by inventors Engle, et al., filed Mar. 26, 2009, describes “enhanced data”, non-financial data beyond the primary transaction data and includes invoice level and line item details (for examples see background section) which is collected at the merchant and delivered to a financial service network.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0264497 for “Systems and Methods to Transfer Tax Credits” by inventor Clyne, filed Apr. 25, 2011, includes disclosure for a list of references describing acquiring consumer purchase data.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0264567 for “Systems and Methods to Provide Data Services” by inventor Clyne, filed Apr. 25, 2011, describes providing access to data of diverse sources in general, and more particularly, transaction data, such as records of payment made via credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, etc., and/or information based on or relevant to the transaction data; also describes that transaction data can be used for various purposes and that transaction data or information derived from transaction data may be provided to third parties.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0066064 for “Systems and Methods to Provide Real-Time Offers via a Cooperative Database” by inventors Yoder, et al., filed Sep. 2, 2011, describes a computing apparatus is configured to: store transaction data recording transactions processed by a transaction handler; organize third party data according to community, where the third party data includes first data received from a first plurality of entities of a first community and second data received from a second plurality of entities of a second community; and responsive to a request from a merchant in the second community, present an offer of the merchant in the second community to users identified via the transaction data and the first data received from the first plurality of entities of the first community. In one embodiment, the first data provides permission from the merchant in the first community to allow the merchant in the second community to use intelligence information of the first community to identify users for targeting offers from the merchant in the second community.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0054189 for “User List Identification” by inventors Moonka, et al., filed Aug. 30, 2011, describes systems, methods, computer program products are provided for presenting content. An example computer implemented method includes identifying, by a data exchange engine executing on one or more processors, one or more user lists based on owned or permissioned data, each user list including a unique identifier; associating metadata with each user list including data describing a category for the user list, population data describing statistical or inferred data concerning a list or members in a given user list and subscription data including data concerning use of a given user list; storing in a searchable database a user list identifier and the associated metadata; and publishing for potential subscribers a list of the user lists including providing an interface that includes for each user list the unique identifier and the associated metadata.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,850,900 for “Full service secure commercial electronic marketplace” by inventors Hare, et al. filed Jun. 19, 2000, describes an electronic marketplace, and in particular to a full service secure commercial electronic marketplace which generically organizes, stores, updates, and distributes product information from a plurality of suppliers to facilitate multiple levels of sourcing, including contract and off-contract purchasing between the suppliers and a plurality of buyers.
None of the prior art references discloses the systems and methods of the present invention for using signals for targeted advertising; or for providing a signals marketplace for value-based exchange of signals information between buyers and sellers, while ensuring protection of the underlying data represented by the signals; or pricing data signals based upon value derived from the use of data signals as observed from consumer behavior; or for maintaining data in a federated model in control of the data owner; or for allowing federated data owners to set rules and parameters for the release of information to approved buyers; or for consumers to permission use of signals and other data taken by third parties through observations; or for prospective data buyers to discover relevant signals from within a federated marketplace which manages distributed data; or for a centralized market to manage rules and provide for clearing and settlement of federated data (signals), or for multiple participants and/or multiple federated data sources to act in concert toward a common objective, with each participant paid based upon value delivered or price agreed to; or for correlating federated information based upon performance of that information in achieving a desired objective; or for third party observers to participate in a federated data market; or for constructing signals for controlled distribution and use by the signal owner and/or for generating signals from locally controlled and isolated sources for indexing, correlation, discovery and use in a federated model with a multiplicity of other signals and participants. Thus, the creation of signals or indicators for a signals marketplace is important for providing secure, private and controlled release of information for value that is determined by a structured and rules-based distributed virtual marketplace for signals.